Million-dollar stamp heist

It took Edwin Cherry a lifetime to amass his collection of thousands of stamps that could be worth more than $1 million, according to his family. Less than two weeks after his death, it is gone.

Between 10 p.m. Wednesday night and Thursday morning, his family believes that his life's work was stolen.

Cherry, 84, of Yuma died Aug. 10 in a Phoenix hospital. Now, as his family prepares to put him to rest, they are dealing with the burglary of his beloved collection.

"If he's looking down on this he's got to be devastated," said Bonnie Collins, Cherry's cousin and one of his few remaining relatives. "That was his life."

His next-of-kin, Collins and her sister Patricia Lynn, came down from Prescott Valley to settle his affairs and pack up his belongings.

They loaded his possessions, which also included furniture from the Orient inlaid with ivory, crystalware and antique vases, into a moving truck and drove it to the La Fuente Inn, 1513 E. 16th St., where they were staying at the time.

Collins said that Wednesday night, when she last checked the truck, it was locked and everything, including the stamps, was safely inside.

Thursday morning, however, Collins found that the metal lock had been cut. When she checked inside the truck she discovered Cherry's stamp collection - five boxes full of dozens of notebooks, albums, envelopes and other containers - was gone.

His coin collection had also been burglarized but his possessions were otherwise accounted for. Collins said the burglars had even moved two vases that were sitting on the stamp boxes and set them down in another area of the truck.

"Everything was untouched but the whole stamp collection is missing ... He told us for years, 'if anything ever happened to me, there’s a million-plus just in my stamp collection,'" Collins said.

She said they had taken precautions, even parking their car to block the truck door, but Collins was still uneasy the night the stamps were allegedly taken.

Family members say that the fact that only the stamps were taken makes them suspect the burglar knew about the collection and came looking for it.

"All the stamp people that I’ve been talking to, all the collectors ... they keep saying this must have been an inside job," said Dee Collins, Bonnie Collins' daughter.

Bonnie Collins and Lynn filed a burglary report with the Yuma Police Department Thursday. Officer Clint Norred, YPD spokesman, said they were investigating.

"It's an active investigation. The whole thing is complicated," Norred said.

Cherry never had his collection appraised so its actual value is unknown. Collins said they were going to assess the value after they had settled things with his will and returned to Prescott Valley.

In addition to keeping an eye on local pawn shops, the family is calling stamp and coin dealers in San Diego, Phoenix and Tucson to alert them.

Barbara Johnson, owner of BJ’s Stamps and Coins in Glendale, was contacted early Thursday. She said that while local pawn shops might not know the correct value of rare stamps, many pawn shops will accept and trade stamps and coins.

She said it was impossible to know the value of the stamps because the collection had not been appraised but she had seen collections worth what Cherry claimed.

"If they collect with knowledge and they try really hard ... it could be worth millions of dollars. If they just save things off their own mail ... it's usually not of any value," Johnson said.

Some of Cherry's stamps dated back to the 1800s. Every decade of the 20th Century was represented in his stamps, said Collins.

According to a profile interview with Cherry published on Sept. 23, 1999 in The Yuma Daily Sun, he was a former U.S. Postal Service employee who commemorated American history through his collection.

According to the article, he used stamps to reflect periods of history and the times of his own life.

"It was his hobby. He had money and that's what he wanted to spend it on," Collins said.

Collins and Lynn remember Cherry teaching them how to collect stamps when they were children. They said, whatever the collection's value, they wanted them back as a remembrance of who Cherry was.

"Monetary value is one thing but heritage ... it's like an heirloom," Collins said.

YPD encourages anyone with information about this case to contact Detective Jesse Escott at 373-4670 or 78-CRIME to remain anonymous.

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Sarah Reynolds can be reached at

sreynolds@yumasun.com or 539-6847.